User Research and Service Design Lead

A Rare, exciting opportunity, to establish and shape a Research and Service Design team at a FTSE100 company. 

As a User Research and Service Design Lead, you will have an extensive background in a range of research methodologies and look to design inclusive, fair, and impartial research, that helps teams gain a deep understanding of our customers, and how they view and use our existing and future products and services. 

In this role, your work may involve the creation of, or optimisation of, products and services across both online and offline channels. 

You will represent best practice through delivery of work with other specialists in our Design, Product, and Technology teams. 

You will be responsible for providing strategic direction, guidance, and support, as well as hands-on work in delivery.  Leading by example, you will play an important role in how we develop our User Research and Service Design community. 

Responsibilities: 

• Create and maintain a research framework and toolkits. 
• Stay up to date with the latest research methodologies and approaches.  
• Develop and grow our research practices (recruitment, skills development, knowledge management and sharing) 
• Synthesize quantitative and qualitative data to help drive product and design decisions.   
• Define and select the most appropriate research methods and analysis techniques to support evidence-based decision making. 
• Promote an iterative, evidence-based approach to research.  Ensuring all research output follows the best practice, including user journeys, service blueprints, storyboards, personas. 
• Planning and facilitating research activities.  
• Support teams doing research work, advocating for best practices, and supporting a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement.  
• Visualisation and articulation of complex problems and concepts, applying logical thinking to help solve these. 
• Determine patterns, standards, policies, roadmaps, vision statements, and focus on outcomes rather than solutions and activities. 
• Monitor and analyse feedback and data to continuously improve the research and design thinking process.  
• Effectively communicating research findings to the team and the wider organisation, sharing a strong and empathetic understanding of their users 
• Work closely with product, design, and technology to turn research findings into stories and actions that lead to valuable product and service feature deliveries. 
• Ensure iterative research based on testing approaches seamlessly integrated into product and service design development lifecycles.  
• Work closely with analytics colleagues to define user centred KPIs and create a rich picture of user behaviour. 
• Help continuously measure and improve the value added through research.  

Essential Experience: 

• 5+ years of experience in User Research and Service Design 
• A passion for design thinking methodologies and human-centred design principles 
• Strong leadership skills, and experience managing and mentoring a team. 
• Proven experience introducing and establishing user research and service design practices in an organisation.  
• Proven experience working in an agile development environment with designers, developers and product managers. 
• Proven experience of a wide range of qualitative and quantitative research methods. 
• Ability to quickly develop recommendations based on quantitative and qualitative evidence.  
• Strong understanding of strengths and limitations of different research methods.  
• Proven experience of presenting research findings in a wide variety of formats and contexts, to stakeholders at all levels.  
• Be able to bridge the gap and communicate between technical and non-technical teams. 

If you’re fully passionate about user research and service design, have the energy to drive standards and adoption, are obsessed with developing and educating others, this is the role for you. 

Additional Information

• We will review your CV within 5 working days of application and get back to you
• We have a Hybrid approach to work remote working, 1-2 days per week in our Cardiff office (or more if you prefer)
• We will give you everything you need to work comfortably from home

Our Commitment to You

At Admiral, we are committed to being a diverse and inclusive workplace. Admiral is proud to be an equal opportunities employer and does not discriminate on the basis of race, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, reproductive health decisions, or related medical conditions), national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, age, or any other legally protected status.

All qualified applicants will receive equal consideration for employment.

Salary, Benefits, and Work-Life Balance

We do not have a set salary for this position, as it will be dependent on the successful candidate’s experience. We are happy to see CVs from all candidates who meet the requirements and will be happy to discuss the remuneration package.

At Admiral, we are proud to be a diverse business where we put our people and customers first. We have great benefits to ensure employees have a great work-life balance; it's one of the reasons we’re consistently voted one of the Sunday Times Best Big Companies to work for in the UK. We want you to have an element of freedom to define a working lifestyle that supports this, so accommodate flexible hours wherever possible.

All colleagues will receive 33 days holiday (including banks holidays) when they join us, and this will increase with length of service, up to a maximum of 38 days (including banks holidays). You also have the option to buy or sell up to five days of annual leave in addition to your allocation.

You can also view some of our other key benefits here.

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